Theodore

That night Theo couldn’t sleep. Last I remember he was mumbling his fables. His soft words lulled me into unconsciousness. We had talked and tried to distract each other from falling asleep, but for me it was inevitable. He told me about his mom and when he was younger and I told him about my father and my grandparents that we used to visit every year up in Maine.

"You close with your mom?" I asked him.

"Yeah."

"After all that you still love her?"

"Never stopped. She does everything for me," he whispered. "She never let me know just how bad off we were. I remember living under a sheet by a dumpster and she used to say we were camping."

As awful a memory as I thought that must be, he smiled at the thought of it. We moved on to talk about other things, back when our families were well-to-do citizens. It was just that same old pretending he liked and the forgetting that I favored. That night we pretended we were kids at a sleepover. We forgot the alcoholic fathers and the highlighted volumes of german fables. The shattered window was the wind against our tent in the backyard.

I woke up to Theo leaning up against the side of my bed, wide awake. The shaggy hair in a mess on top of his head mingling with the newly forming scab on his forehead. From his profile I could see the bags under his eyes and assumed the blank look they must have contained. They stared at the broken window to the pitch black world outside. He was devoid of any expression on his face.

"You snore when you sleep," he noted absently.

"Did I keep you up?" I asked.

"No," he said and picked at the floorboards. "It's four. We have a couple hours until school."

"You can stay up here if you want," I offered.

"Can't miss school." I almost forgot how concerned he was about his schooling. Almost.

"You should try to get some sleep Theo."

"Dana?" He looked to me from the side of the bed.

There were those eyes again. Even with one side of his face bruised and slightly swollen there were those eyes again. I can only try to explain them. His blue was that delicate, frozen, almost white blue that had dark lightning bolts in the crevices for the most stunning contrast. He had mastered the art of using that blue to relay a message and it was hauntingly intentional that I couldn't read them now. If he was angry they looked like cracking ice ready to swallow you in the frozen water. When he was happy they sparkled brighter than the sun on ocean waves. Those little details only I could pick up on after watching him for so long. It had come a long way from knowing the birthmark under his chin.

"Yeah?"

"Can you call me Theodore?"

It was a simple question that made my throat want to collapse.

Silence entered the room and put his hand on my shoulder. I humored him a little as he began to sink in and suck up all that luxurious lack of sound on my part. My eyes found Theo and ripped away the vision of silence I had put there instead. Silence was all too ready to take his leave. His shrouding fingers glanced my shoulder as he went to wait by the door.

"Sure," I croaked finally. Silence left. "Get some sleep Theodore."

Instead of listening to me he turned to kneel against my bed so that his face was about a foot from mine.

"It's four eighteen I'm not getting some sleep anytime soon."

I don't know why, but I desperately wanted his lips on mine, his calloused fingers brushing my knuckles, his chest flush against me giving me all those butterflies that made me forget everything better than any high I've ever had. For once, I wanted our kiss to fix something because the two of us sure needed it. I glanced at that scab on his forehead and hardened my resolve.

"Just f*****g kiss me," I told him. That somehow conveyed my need well enough for him to lean forward and meet my lips with his.